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The Bitch Doctors

2/5 stars

Event review by Cara McGuigan.

Published 23 August 2011

The premise for The Bitch Doctors is a pretty slack one. As the audience enters they’re given a slip of paper on which to write their ‘problem.’ A panel of three Fringe performers – tonight burlesque performer Audacity Chutzpah, juggler Matt Ricardo, and compere Dee Itsy – then try and ‘solve’ these problems. In practice, it’s much the same format as Loose Women, and almost as funny. The problem is, it means the audience basically makes up the show, and the performers don't do a lot.

There are brief interludes where Ricardo does an undeniably impressive balancing act with wooden boxes, a cigar and a glass of wine, and Chutzpah performs a striptease representing the questionable liberation of women through the ages. However, the improv comedy is listless and veers into name-dropping anecdotes and in-jokes with the techies.

The main problem here is mid-fest malaise. They’re here in body but not in spirit, and you could probably drive a flaming motorcycle past the stage without them batting a (singed) eyelash.